


Trust No One, and Deny Everything.

by lesbianbean



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Backstory, Flashbacks, M/M, Motels, Roswell, Spy Stuff, why is there not more fanfiction about this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 16:39:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7515467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianbean/pseuds/lesbianbean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They don't call it love. But maybe it's the closest that men like them can get.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trust No One, and Deny Everything.

1973:  
Deep Throat had been asleep when his phone went off, but he was awake and alert by the third ring. He used to like sleep. He used to have good dreams. Now, he dreamed of a jungle hell and a blank, grey face shattering to pieces as he pulled a trigger.  
“Hello?”  
“Hello,” the voice on the other end drawled. He knew it instantly, and could picture perfectly the cigarette smoke that surrounded his colleague, could almost smell the smoke in the room, although he knew that that wasn’t possible.  
“May I ask why I am subject to the pleasure at such a late hour?”  
“Mulder’s going on vacation. Up to the lake house with his family. Isn’t that nice?”  
“Yes.”  
“He’s asked me to join him. I could use a break. You wouldn’t mind filling in for me tomorrow.”  
It wasn’t a question.  
“Not at all.”  
“Good, good.”  
The next afternoon, Deep Throat at a cluttered table in the basement conference room that had been adapted into an office as the growing national crisis required more and more paperwork. Mr. X sat across from him, flipping through a file labeled THE GROWING CONCERN OF BIOLOGICAL WARFARE.  
“Coffee?” Deep Throat asked about an hour into their work, willing to do anything to tear his eyes away from the photos of the alien he killed and the subsequent report he had written.  
“Please.” Mr. X responded, not looking up from the diagram detailing the different weapons that could be created with some sticks, poisonous plants, and an imagination. “Two sugars. And cream if they have it and it’s fresh.”  
Deep Throat placed the mug in front of Mr. X before taking a swig of his own. Bitter--sugar and cream could never really erase the bitterness--but it sharpened his mind, allowed him to focus.  
“Can’t sleep?”  
“Got a few hours last night, but then the phone rang, and I was up the rest of the night.”  
Mr. X nodded.  
“I haven’t really slept since I was a child. You’ll get used to it. Do you have a pen?”  
Deep Throat passed his pen across the table, and their hands brushed. Mr. X looked up from his paper for the first time since they had exchanged a brief greeting in the morning. Deep Throat met his eyes. It was just a moment, but it was all they needed.  
“Seems unfair for him to just dump his work on us and go off on a vacation. Did he give an explanation?”  
“He’s tagging along with the Mulders.”  
“With the Mulders, hm? I think you might owe me fifty dollars after all.”  
A chuckle from both of them, and then they kept working. As the day ended, Mr. X handed Deep Throat the pen.  
“Here. Thanks for lending it to me.”  
“No problem. See you tomorrow.”  
Inside the cap, it said simply Midnight. Capitol Motel. Deep Throat uses the cigarette lighter that Cancer Man gave everyone last Christmas to destroy it, watching the ashes fall like snowflakes and blow away in the wind.  
~~~  
They get separate rooms and then meet in Mr. X’s only after a half hour has passed. Mr. X leaves the television on, and neither of them speak over a whisper. Both of them understand the importance of secrecy, of locked doors and closed windows. It’s not the fifties anymore, but they know what still happens to men like them, what the people they work next to every day would do to them if they found out. Even worse would be the reaction from the man currently watching his son sleep in a lake house miles up the East Coast. He uses secrets like weapons, and he could use this one to destroy them both. They pull each other tighter in the dark room, forgetting everything they’ve done for a few short hours. Afterwards, Deep Throat uncorks the bottle of expensive whisky that he’d been saving for the occasion and they savor it.  
~~~  
1980  
Mr. X has quite a few favorite memories of their time together, but the best one by far was when they traveled together to Roswell for a job. They worked together often, but this time, they managed to finish the job in a day and spent the next two days together. Roswell was peaceful. Mr. X had spearheaded The Roswell Incident, which had given the town’s economy a small boom. It was a good book, just too fantastic to be true, and had effectively killed any chances of the real Roswell story getting out. Deep Throat read it while they relaxed on Mr. X’s motel room bed.  
“You are an excellent writer. I’m on the edge of my seat here, and I know what really happened.”  
“Well, I did take all honors english classes in high school. I was in the gifted program.”  
“I heard that Cancer Man wanted this assignment.”  
“He can’t to save his life. Has he ever talked you into reading one of his ‘spy novels’?”  
“Once. Never again.”.  
Later, as they tour one of Roswell’s “UFO sites” Deep Throat bought Mr. X a cheap pen decorated with a bright green alien, a flying saucer, and the words I SURVIVED ALIEN ABDUCTION. Mr. X raised an eyebrow, but tucked it carefully into his pocket. He autographed Deep Throat’s copy of The Roswell Incident for him later, using the pen. Later, lying in the dark, with Deep Throat in a light sleep next to him, he thought about love. When he was in high school, he believed that love stories were cautionary tales. He never dated. Never wanted to. And then later, when he realized what he was, he knew that he’d never be able to fall in love. He doesn't call this, whatever he does with Deep Throat, love. He can’t. The idea that love is a weakness for men in his profession is a cliche, but cliches are what they are because they are powerful. He has too much to lose, even more than Deep Throat. He had to fight twice as hard to get where he is.  
But as he wrapped an arm around his partner and slipped into an uneasy sleep he thought, Maybe this is enough.  
~~~  
1993  
They don’t speak for almost a month after Deep Throat starts talking to Mulder.  
“You just signed your own death warrant. They’re going to find you, and they’re going to destroy you. I should kill you now. I’d give you an easy death!”  
“This is important. Mulder can do what we couldn’t.”  
“You know how Cancer Man watches him. It will take him a week, two weeks tops before you’ve got a bullet in your head.”  
“I know him. I know this system. I can be careful.”  
Mr. X stormed out of the motel room and drove back to his apartment. He tried to make himself throw the pen, now faded from almost ten years of use, away, but he couldn’t.  
When they reconcile, there is a sense of urgency. Time is running out for both of them. Deep Throat tells Mr. X about Mulder and Scully.  
“He’s an optimist. She’s a skeptic. They make a good team.”  
“Like you and me.”  
“Are you calling me an optimist?”  
“You believe that you can betray the Syndicate like this and not get killed.”  
They change the subject to the wine Mr. X brought to their meeting spot. When they part, their last kiss is desperate. Both of them know, though they don’t admit it, that it’s the last time. Deep Throat leaves the room first.  
~~~~  
1994  
Mr. X hates him. He really does. He hates him for dying, for leaving him to deal with a bratty child, for putting his life in danger. Deep Throat didn’t leave behind secret orders to help Mulder, but he couldn’t leave the X-Files closed. He didn’t want Deep Throat to have died for nothing. HIs  
“So how do I contact you?”  
“You can’t.”  
“I may still need more.”  
“You still don’t get it, do you? Closing the X-Files, separating you and Scully was only the beginning. The truth is still out there, but it’s never been more dangerous. The man we both knew paid for that information with his life, a sacrifice I’m not willing to make.”  
When Mulder rages at him, half mad with grief because his partner was taken away from him, Mr. X feels a twinge of sympathy, but he buries it.  
“Deny everything.”  
The monster they fought didn’t have a heart, so it followed that he couldn’t have one either. And neither could Mulder. Mulder, the schoolboy who thought he could poke a sleeping dragon and escape unsinged. Mulder, who left a swath of destruction in his wake, who saw himself as equal to people who had fought the thousand headed monster for decades.  
“You ignore my call for help and then you expect me to do what you say? You go to hell! “  
“You got him killed! You got her killed. That’s not going to happen to me. You’re my tool, you understand? I come to you when I need you. Right now, you’re heading in a direction that can lead them right here.”  
He knows what Mulder sees when he looks at him. He knows Mulder still thinks he can save the world and still be “good.”  
“I used to be you. I was where you are now. But you’re not me, Mulder. I don’t think you have the heart. Walk away. Grieve for Scully and then never look back. You will be able to live with yourself, Mulder... on the day you die.”  
~~~~  
1996  
He dies with the faded pen in his pocket.  
He’s not afraid, in the end, when his vision tunnels and the dingy hallway dissolves into static. He’s done his duty, and he was right, as he often is. He can live with himself.  
And when he sees Deep Throat, finally, they embrace without fear.

**Author's Note:**

> *waves tiny X/Deep Throat flag*  
> Also, the Roswell Incident was an actual book written in 1980. It's a pretty fun book, if you'd like to check it out.


End file.
